Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

William Buskist & Jessica G. Irons

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decisions for them. Thus from these students’ perspective, there is no apparent

reason to think critically when others do all of the thinking for them.

● Having other people make decisions relieves students of responsibility. This reason

for failing to think critically is on a par with the notion of just following orders:

“Because somebody tells me what to do, and I do it, I should not be held account-

able for my actions—I was just doing as I was told.”

●

Some students may think that their judgment is inferior to that of an authority

figure. Many students come from backgrounds in which they are instructed to

“obey authority,” which implies to some extent the notion that “I am not ready to

make decisions on my own—I need to look to older, wiser, and more informed

people to tell me what to do.”

●

Many students, particularly freshman and sophomores, think in terms of black and

white rather than shades of gray. Perry’s (1970) work on the intellectual develop-

ment of college students substantiates this point—many college students prefer to

be told what is true and what is false rather than discovering that information on

their own.

●

Some students are accustomed to memorizing information rather than thinking

about it. Memorizing facts and figures takes time and effort, to be sure, but it does

not require the uncertainty that goes with thinking—and that uncertainty can be

discomforting to some students.

● Some students may undervalue the consequences of their decisions. These students

may have never had to face the genuine consequences of poor decision making

before because somebody else has been there to protect them from those conse-

quences (e.g., a student whose parents pay for the financial consequences for his or

her arrest for driving under the influence).

● Some students don’t have the time to invest in genuine critical thinking. In addition

to carrying a full academic load, some students raise families and work in part-time

or full-time jobs while working on their degrees. These students often believe that

they don’t have the time to take classes that require a lot of out-of-class work such

as writing papers, preparing presentations, and other assignments that require

thoughtful preparation and the integration of knowledge.

●

Some students lack the basic topical knowledge needed for critical thinking. They

simply do not have the academic background (they lack basic foundational knowl-

edge) to understand, let alone analyze, integrate, and apply the subject matter they

currently are “learning.”

Part of the difficulty in effectively teaching critical thinking is recognizing that some

students enter the classroom not only unprepared, but contraprepared, to learn how to

think critically. Nothing in their personal or academic backgrounds has taught them to

think critically or be disposed favorably toward learning how to think critically. And for

some students, their personal and academic backgrounds have encouraged them not to

think critically, especially in cases where students have learned to rely on the advice and

judgment of others to direct their actions.

Effective teachers understand how the variables that give rise to student resistance to

critical thinking impact the learning environment of the classroom (Riggio & Halpern,